Abstract
A relevance of fear and concerns about vaccine development and its side effects are suggested to explain COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. However, evidence supporting the phobic origin hypothesis of hesitancy for COVID-19 and other vaccinations remains indirect and elusive. We addressed this issue by investigating the existence of a relationship between fear conditioning, extinction, and the respective vaccination hesitancy and anxiety scores in a group of 25 individuals. Overall, we show that the general mechanism of fear extinction learning is impaired in individuals with high vaccine hesitancy. State and trait anxiety scores do not account for this result. These findings suggest that attitudes against vaccination could be linked to an altered inhibitory learning process.
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